Fatty acid metabolism

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Fatty acids play an essential role in a diversity of cellular processes, including building membranes, anchoring proteins to membranes, storing energy, as precursors in synthesis of lipid second messengers. They are obtained from the diet or can be synthesised de novo. Liver and adipose tissue are central organs involved in homeostasis of fatty acids and depending on the delivery of carbon from the diet, they convert its excess to fatty acids for storage or distribution through the body. In biological systems fatty acids can be synthesised de novo by two distinct fatty acid synthase (FAS) pathways. Human cells follow type I FAS synthesis whereas plants, bacteria and other microorganisms involve FAS II pathway. The mammalian FAS consists of a single gene coding for a polypeptide that contains all reaction centers to produce a fatty acid (Smith et al. 2003). In lower eukaryota, plants and bacteria there are two genes, which products form a multifunctional complex (White et al. 2005). FAS I is usually considered to be a more efficient biosynthetic machine because the enzymatic activities are fused into a single polypeptide template and the intermediates do not diffuse from the complex. However, in contrast to FAS II, which produces diversity of products for cellular metabolism, FAS I produces only palmitate. De novo synthesis is especially active in embryogenesis and fetal lungs, in adults in lactating breasts and endometrium (Swinnen et al. 2006). An increased fatty acid synthesis has been also observed in tumor cells as a result of elevated activity of ATP citrate lyase and also fatty acid synthase (Turyn et al. 2003; Kuhajda et al. 2000).

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